It sits on West 43rd Street, closer to Sixth Avenue than Broadway, aloof from the mayhem. No flashing neon mars its elegant (and landmarked) façade. No Broadway show has made its modest marquee the talk of the town.

ENLARGE

Michael Presser, the new president and CEO of the Town Hall, in the building's 1,495-seat theater.
Adrian Fussell for The Wall Street Journal

What this 1921 McKim, Mead & White building does have, however, is history: speakers from Eleanor Roosevelt to Garrison Keillor, performances by Richard Strauss to Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Now, the venue's new leadership is leveraging that past for a redesigned future. Last month, Town Hall announced that longtime board member Michael Presser would take over as its new president and CEO, succeeding Marvin Leffler, who stepped down after more than 30 years of leadership.

As a symbolic gesture to the public, the venue is marking the changeover with a free concert on Thursday that will include acts from Broadway shows ("Chicago," "Avenue Q," "Phantom"), plus the New York City Gay Men's Chorus, the Town Hall Broadway's Rising Stars Chorus, and others. Tickets are free at the box office as of Monday at noon.

The evening's title, "Spotlight on Town Hall," indicates Mr. Presser's intention to return the 1,495-seat room to a starring role. "From its very beginnings, this has been the meeting place of the city, a place for public debate and entertainment," he said.

Built 93 years ago by a group of suffragists, the venue was designed as a speakers' hall in an era before microphones were standard. "It's in the family of theaters like Carnegie Hall and City Center," said architectural historian Barry Lewis. "These were theaters that were built to spread the word of democracy. The layout of the seating there is such that there is no obstructed view, and the acoustics are wonderful."

Major issues of the day were addressed: Margaret Sanger was arrested there for advocating birth control on Nov. 13, 1921. Later, it was home to the radio series "America's Town Meetings of the Air," which assembled four speakers for a public discussion. Its stage was also home to ground-breaking performances: Opera singer Marian Anderson made her New York debut there in 1935. Whitney Houston did the same at age 14 four decades later.

If the Town Hall's prominence has faded in the years since, there is at least a silver lining in its story: It's still standing.

That could just as easily not be the case. After assuming control of the building in 1958, New York University was faced with a problem by the late '70s. "They didn't want to abandon the building that they had owned for about 20 years, but they felt they couldn't afford to keep it going," said Mr. Leffler, Town Hall's president emeritus. At the time he was a member of the NYU Club, an independent organization that leased the space above the theater. "It was not landmarked then. We became concerned because we had the club upstairs. What was going to happen to the club?"

In 1978, Mr. Leffler formed an organization that took over the management of the historic venue, thus avoiding a sale that might have allowed a new owner to raze it. "We thought we would do it for a couple of years," he said. "Ignorance is a wonderful thing. I didn't know how hard it would be."

Even as Times Square and the Theater District recovered, the Town Hall could not simply hop on the Broadway bandwagon: It was designed as a hall for speakers, meaning it has almost no wing space and cannot accommodate sets and scenery. While major performers have given concerts there—Woody Allen, Joshua Bell, Nora Jones, Rufus Wainwright—the hall is rarely booked for the kinds of extended engagements that can make a venue famous.

Changing that is now in the hands of Mr. Presser, who is also the founder of Inside Broadway, which brings theater programs to city schools. "Marvin [Leffler] is due an enormous amount of credit for saving this building," he said. "We stabilized, and we grew. But we are now in a different era with different challenges.

Among his first steps was reinserting the theater into the political mix by applying to host an upcoming mayoral debate. He has also submitted to the board a modernization plan that would bring the venue up to entertainment industry standards through capital projects, improvements in the box-office operation and refinements in management.

"Today, it's all about service to the ticket buyer," Mr. Presser said. "It matters a lot if the seat is uncomfortable, if the air conditioning is not working, if the bathroom situation is not acceptable."

The physical changes will prove challenging for a 92-year-old building that is landmarked on the inside and outside—and whose air rights are long gone.

Still, Mr. Presser said, "we can change the way we do business. Our customers are not only the ticket-buying public, but also the promoters that rent our building, the media and the government."

Bringing all that together shouldn't be too hard. The hall was built for it.

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